Happy Hour Roundup

By Jonathan BernsteinBy Jonathan BernsteinSeptember 5, 2012

1. Mitt Romney will be on Meet the Press this Sunday, the kind of thing he’s been reluctant to do this cycle. Please: more questions on substance, fewer on the campaign. I’d like some questions about his tax and budget numbers — and lots about foreign policy and national security. Sample bad question: Anything that mentions Clint Eastwood. Sample good questions: Pressing him on the TPC analysis of his tax reform plan, or pushing on his Iran policy.

3. How the Republican-aligned media works the convention — so that the unaligned, “neutral” press will follow their lead. Really good reporting and analysis from David Weigel. The comparison set here: The extent and effectiveness of the Republican manufactured phony outrage over the missing “God” in the Democratic platform, compared with the (very tiny) extent and (lack of) effectiveness of the Democratic manufactured phony outrage over the missing concern for the troops in Mitt Romney’s convention speech last week.

8. Blame the Obama administration for not closing Gitmo if you want, but apparently they at least are running it a lot better than the Bush administration did: Adam Serwer reports that the Bush-era problem of releasing people who would then return to terrorism (or take up terrorism for the first time) is largely been fixed. I’d love to know whether it’s better administration, stopping torture, or something else.

10. Moderate Democrats are pouring money into the Indiana Senate race to attack Richard Mourdock, who defeated Dick Lugar in the Republican primary. Liberals will complain about Democrat Joe Donnelly if he winds up in the Senate, but in my view this is one way a healthy party functions; it nominates moderates in tough districts and tries to win, instead of always nominating the most liberal (or conservative) candidate and hoping that it’s a good cycle and they can hold the seat for one term.

12. And speaking of the numbers: Nate Silver is increasingly convinced that Obama should be favored to win in November. For whatever it’s worth: I don’t really see anything that’s pushed me away from my sense all along that it’s a race that could easily go either way, but that Obama has been a very slim favorite.

13. Silver is correct, however, that you want to lead coming out of your convention. Yesterday I reported the Pollster average had Romney moving into a very tiny lead; but as of today it turns out they’re dead even. Note that the way Pollster’s moving trend line works it adjusts into the past to account for new polls, and that sometimes polls that were in the field earlier are released later, so that not both the current and the past trend line can change. That’s what happened here; once more polling was accounted for, the small Romney lead that showed up yesterday never actually happened.